Manchester United look very comfortable with Casemiro pulling the strings

Manchester United didn’t have too many difficulties in seeing off a tepid Nottingham Forest, with Casemiro adding a sense of calm to their midfield.

It’s getting tight at the top. Following their 3-0 win against Nottingham Forest at Old Trafford, Manchester United are just a point off fourth place in the Premier League and are just four points off second-placed Newcastle United. They’re still 11 behind Arsenal, but a comfortable win against accommodating but ultimately fairly doughty opposition with a couple of key players missing told us more than anything else that this United are a team heading in the right direction.

Manchester United are better than last season, but that’s a bar so low they’d need to limbo to not clear it. They remain capable of underwhelming, the latest example of which came at Villa Park in their penultimate Premier League game, but it has looked as though there is finally a plan at Old Trafford. Erik ten Hag has improved players whose careers had seemed at risk of stalling completely, while new arrivals have been successfully integrated.

Obviously, the biggest cause of strife throughout the first half of this season, the distraction they could have done without, has now burned his bridges and left. Their transfer dealings have been good, even if they didn’t get the one player they sought more than any other during the summer. There is an element of uncertainty surrounding the club’s future over who the new owners might be, but that seems unlikely to be a quick process. They’re still a little way of being the finished article, but they’re heading in the right direction and Arsenal have already demonstrated this season how quickly fortunes can turn in the modern game if you’re canny enough in the transfer market.

Nottingham Forest went into the midwinter break on a slight upturn, taking seven points from their last four games before everybody broke up with a draw against Brentford and wins against Liverpool and Crystal Palace. They needed them. Even this, with the assistance of results elsewhere, had left them one place off the bottom of the Premier League, with only crisis club du jour Southampton below them.

It’s easy to criticise Forest for their unique decision to bring in 23 new players over the course of the summer, but we’re now approaching the halfway point in the Premier League and although they had been looking slightly more cohesive before the mid-season, they remain too prone to basic…